by Donn Taylor
Brillo would be more like it, I thought as I crossed the campus circle toward class. Her tightly-curled blonde hair reminded me of the spun metal swirls of a Brillo scrubbing pad, and her manner suggested she’d be just as abrasive. I don’t worry much about people’s private lives, but Steven Drisko’s situation seemed provocative. I’d never met his first wife, but I wondered about their divorce. And I wondered where he’d latched onto a classic trophy wife like Brill.
My department chairman met me in the hallway outside my office. He looked worried. “Press, I guess you’ve heard about that rocket failure in California.”
“Someone mentioned it in the grill,” I said. I had more pressing things to think about. A line from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam leaped into my mind: “Nor heed the rumble of a distant drum!”
My chairman frowned. “That rocket may be important to the university. It belonged to one of Gordon Samstag’s companies.”
CHAPTER 15
Samstag’s company? That got my attention. My former distant drum now exploded like the thunder of timpani. Gordon Samstag was chairman of our board of trustees, and Overton University’s solvency depended as much on trustee generosity as on government-subsidized student tuition. Any crisis that threatened a trustee therefore threatened the university. Yet from my point of view, I wondered why I kept stumbling over Samstag’s name every time I turned around.
It turned out later that the rocket belonged to the U.S. government rather than one of Samstag’s companies. But his company Pegasus Electronics had provided the guidance system that failed, so that amounted to the same thing.
But I had a class to teach. Still working on obscure turning points, I talked about the Peace of Wedmore. Invading Danes played havoc with the tiny kingdoms of England until King Alfred of Wessex defeated them in A.D. 878. In the peace that followed, he launched a cultural revival and the beginnings of English language literature. The small ripple of that single event grew into a tide that swept far beyond what those involved in it could imagine—yet another suggestion of a higher guiding force at the helm of history.
As always, my adrenaline was flowing by the end of the class in spite of my internal pianist’s grinding out a Mozart sonata without enthusiasm. My own enthusiasm remained high, though, as I turned into my office for my scheduled office hours. I usually do professional reading unless a student shows up, and few of them do this early in the semester. But that day I only sat and worried about my nonexistent affair with Mitra Fortier. A couple of hours later, I’d still found no way to defend myself.
I was about to leave when the phone rang. This time my daughter Cindy’s voice contained no sweetness.
“Daddy, I’m so mad I could ... could do something foolish.”
My parental caution asserted itself. “Don’t do anything until you calm down. What’s wrong?”
Her voice remained tense. “You remember Mark Weston? His editorial came out in today’s edition of the paper.”
“I remember you said it would be better than his last one.” The last one had been heretical enough.
She laughed. “It was better. You know how the diversity crowd talks about society as a tossed salad? The more diverse the ingredients are, the better the salad?”
“And we’re not supposed to ask questions about the ingredients.”
“Exactly.” Cindy’s earnestness overshadowed her anger. “So Mark proposed that students hold a tossed salad celebration sale.”
I could see where this was going, but I waited for Cindy to tell me.
“The basic salad with lettuce and tomatoes would sell for one dollar a bowl. A serving with cat hair added would cost a dollar and a half. With cat hair and buffalo chips it would cost two dollars, and a serving with those and quinine would cost three.”
“Once one grants the premise, the logic is unshakeable.” My admiration for Mark soared. “But he isn’t going to be very popular.”
Cindy sucked in her breath. “Word leaked out in advance to some of the Residence Life Education Groups. They stole all the papers out of the campus racks and burned them right there on campus. So now nobody gets to read Mark’s editorial.”
“What is the university administration going to do about it?” I already knew, but thought I’d better ask.
“Nothing!” Cindy seemed to grind out her words between clenched teeth. “Not one thing! We told them it was larceny and violation of our newspaper’s right to freedom of the press, and that the fire was a danger to everybody.” She paused. “Do you know what they said?”
“Something about ‘You have to understand the provocations,’ I’d guess.”
“How did you know, Daddy? That’s exactly what they said. And they’re not going to do one ... one cussed thing.”
Her use of the pronoun we, as in “we told them,” sent up the red flag, so I decided it was time for parental guidance. “Administrations rarely do anything in cases like this, honey. More to the point, what are you going to do?”
“We haven’t decided yet, but we’re not going to let them run over us.”
“The best thing you can do is find a sympathetic alumnus who’ll pay for republishing the paper.”
She sighed. “We’re already working on that, but the PC mob will just steal them again.”
“The smartest thing you personally can do is to stay out of it. You don’t need to get in trouble halfway through your junior year.”
“I know that, Daddy, but it’s a matter of principle. I think you’ve made a few decisions like this.”
“That’s why I’m the campus pariah,” I said. “You’d be smart to sit this one out and graduate on time next year.”
Her voice grew sad. “I’ll think about it, Daddy.”
She said she loved me and we hung up.
So now her troubles were piled on top of mine. Nothing weighs on a parent’s conscience so much as seeing his own shortcomings reincarnated in the lives of his children. And Cindy had inherited my worst qualities of stubbornness on matters of principle.
The afternoon continued its slide toward winter night as I drove across town to meet Dr. Sheldon and Mara. She was there before me, and she did not look happy. I wondered if it had to do with Cynthia Starlington’s visit at lunch. It isn’t every day a beautiful woman rubs circles on my back.
“Well, children,” boomed Dr. Sheldon, “let’s cut to the chase. You first, Press.”
I summarized my interviews with Weldon Combes and Freda Broyles, emphasizing that the faculty’s ill-fated trip to Las Vegas was rearing its head again. I named the trustees who made the trip and mentioned Combes’ warning that might or might not have been friendly. For good measure, I threw in Steven Drisko’s question and Brill Drisko’s not-so-subtle suggestion that I mind my own business.
“Did Freda tell you about her difficulties with the police?” Mara asked.
“What difficulties?” I asked.
Mara looked smug. “I did talk to Sergeant Spencer. He says when the police went to mark off Professor Fortier’s house as a crime scene, they found Freda Broyles coming out of it carrying several dresses. She claimed she’d loaned them to Professor Fortier and just wanted to get them back before the police got them tied up as possible evidence. Thursday night—while police were investigating—do you remember that she came into the Science Center hallway and left before the police saw her?”
“I asked her about that,” I said. “She claimed she’d forgotten a lesson plan and had to go back home for it. I never knew her to teach from a lesson plan.”
Mara smiled, presumably at having learned something before I did. “Sergeant Spencer says the officers involved claimed that two of those dresses didn’t contain enough material to make a girdle for Freda.”
“She is rather large.” Dr. Sheldon loved understatement.
With the dress incident, it looked like I’d have to talk to Freda again. We moved on to other things. I produced my photocopy of the card from Mitra’s office, but Mara and Dr. Sheldon could make no more of it than
I had.
I then gave more detail on Freda’s story about Mitra’s dating interest and its sad ending with the aircraft accident.
Dr. Sheldon leaned forward in his wheelchair. “I read about that accident last summer. I’ll get on my computer and see what I can find out.”
He’d always been an avid researcher, and his boredom provided a wonderfully powerful incentive.
“While you’re at it,” I said, “would you check into Gordon Samstag and the rocket that failed today? For some reason, his name keeps turning up.”
Dr. Sheldon rubbed his hands together. “Another subject to research? That’ll keep me off the streets and out of trouble. Now, Mara, it’s your turn.”
Mara’s blue gaze had always seemed a kind of marvel to me. It could change from ice to acetylene torch in half a second, or it could radiate all temperatures in between. Now as she looked at each of us in turn, it registered in the moderate range—warm for Dr. Sheldon, cool for me. I could usually read her moods but not the reasons behind them.
“Something else from Sergeant Spencer,” she said. “Beyond the Freda Broyles thing, he wasn’t enthusiastic about giving us inside police information—at one point, said flatly he wouldn’t do it. But he understood why Press and I were worried about Captain Staggart’s accusations, and he said they didn’t sound like anything either one of us would do.”
A tiny smile lifted the corners of her lips. “I thanked him for that. Then he said he’d seen several policemen laughing over some kind of book in the evidence room where they shouldn’t have been at all. They were leering at it as if it was pornography. He didn’t know if it had any bearing on our situation, and he didn’t offer to find out. So where do we go from here?”
I grimaced. “I’m not sure. I’ve already talked to each of the professors who saw the quarrel between Mitra and Cynthia Starlington.”
Mara raised her eyebrow. “Just what are you investigating, Press?”
I gave her my patented blank stare. “Anything involving Mitra in the days before she was ... before she died.”
Mara nodded. “So I’m not the only one who thinks she was murdered.”
“I suspect it,” I said, “but we’ll have to wait for the police to confirm or deny.”
“There’s something else I want to know.” Her gaze warmed a bit. “Dean-Dean said something about your holding a contest about the names on campus …”
Dr. Sheldon pounced like a puma. “That happened during the Great Renaming, Mara, right after the new administration took over. The library became the Media Center, the gym became the Fitness Center, and Student Affairs became the Office of Student Services. Everything on campus became either a ‘center’ or a ‘service.’”
He grinned broadly. “Our distinguished professor proposed that they rename other things, too. We still have a few ministerial students, so he organized a campus-wide contest to find a new name they could use for hell.”
Mara’s eyes sparkled.
“The only requirement,” Dr. Sheldon continued, “was that hell had to become either a ‘center’ or a ‘service.’ I’ve forgotten a lot of the crazy suggestions that came up, but our glorious professor provided the winners.” He paused for effect, then said, “The runner-up was ‘Universal Retribution Center.’”
Mara laughed out loud.
“But the winner was ... ” Dr. Sheldon again rubbed his hands together, “‘Non-temporal Thermodynamic Services.’”
I felt the hot rush of blood to my face as he and Mara laughed together.
“It’s no wonder you’re the most popular man on campus,” Mara said. Then she looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry to break this up, but I have to meet somebody.” She avoided my eyes.
As the door closed behind her, Dr. Sheldon said, “I’m glad to see her launching some kind of social life.” Before I could reply, he checked his watch and said, “News time.” He clicked his remote control.
From station KLYE, the customary graphics chased each other around the TV screen, culminating in the requisite nuclear explosion and bell-ring. Tonight, the makeup artists had given Francie LaBouche, the chorus girl/anchorette, a fairer complexion than usual. I was happy that the rocket failure bumped Mitra’s death out of the lead story slot. The clip showed a solemn Gordon Samstag promising a thorough investigation followed by appropriate corrective action.
Then came the part I dreaded.
“Tonight the police announced the cause of Professor Mitra Fortier’s death,” Francie intoned. “The autopsy showed that she died of a massive overdose of cocaine.” The visual image jumped to another peroxide pop-tart standing in front of the Overton City police station and looking important.
“Hi, Francie,” the reporter said. “Well, police declined to state how the cocaine was administered, but their conduct makes it clear they’re treating this death as a homicide. And there’s apparently more to come. A police source who declined to be named said the deceased had recently had an angry conflict with another faculty member. Beyond that, however …” (Here the reporter came close to drooling.) “Beyond that, Professor Fortier seems to have been involved in a long-standing romantic relationship with a male member of the faculty. But last fall she ran into competition from a younger female professor, and an angry confrontation between the two women resulted.”
Virtue radiated from the reporter’s face as she concluded, “Police declined to name the faculty members involved.”
I didn’t have to guess who they were or who had leaked the information.
CHAPTER 16
I drove home with spirits lower than a deep sea diver’s toenail. It was just a matter of time before Mara and I would be identified as two sides of the alleged triangle involving Mitra, and I had yet to find a defense. How could I when no one had mentioned specific times and places? I worried about my daughter, too. Cindy didn’t realize she was playing against a stacked deck, and it might be too late when she found it out. Even in bed I worried, but worrying brought no solutions. Hours later, I dropped off to sleep, my last memory the raucous mocking of Clyde McCoy’s wah-wah-muted trumpet.
In dreams I couldn’t even make a clean job of falling on my face, so I welcomed the alarm clock’s jangle on Tuesday morning. I managed to shave without amputating my nose, and the calendar reminded me this was a blue-suit day. A glance at the newspaper headlines revealed that investigation of the rocket failure continued, but without further comments from Gordon Samstag. Fortunately, the TV-news rumors about me and Mitra Fortier had not made the papers.
I swallowed another ham-sandwich-and-coffee breakfast and followed the narrow walkway up to the campus before eight-thirty. I found my office door standing open. Seated at my desk and ransacking its drawers was Patrolman Bruno Pinkle. More evidence that local police procedures are somewhat informal.
Pinkle looked up with a sadistic grin. “Hello, Professor. Who’s doing the grading now?”
He would never forget flunking my course. Several years ago, soon after The Crisis, our new administration created extension campuses in every location where money could be found. One lucrative source was a federally-funded law enforcement program. And on our short-lived campus at Sprague’s Crossing, twenty miles west of Overton City, government funds found a small-town cop named Bruno Pinkle.
My assignment was to drive over there one night a week and teach a three-hour session of Western Civilization to our boys in blue. Most of them did well, but a few thought federal funds bought them an automatic pass. Those few included Bruno Pinkle, who had now turned up as a patrolman in Overton City.
Some failed the course but came close enough to pass next time around. But Pinkle flunked it flatter than a drop of sweat from the brow of a tall archangel. He earned a string of zeros that would have made him a millionaire if they’d had an Arabic number one and a dollar sign in front of them.
He held me responsible, of course. So now he sat at my desk, greeting me with a taunt.
I reached in my pocket, flicked my voice
recorder on, and said, “I guess I’m not supposed to ask what you’re doing in my desk, Patrolman Pinkle.”
His grin widened. “You won’t never have to ask, Professor, because I’ll tell you. Your dean, Mr. Billig, said we could search any offices and any computers we wanted to.”
“Does that mean I’m suspected of something?”
“Your affair with Mitra Fortier makes you a person of interest in our investigation of her death. It’ll go easier with you, Professor, if you tell us all about it.” His hands fumbled with my computer under the desk.
“There was no affair,” I said. “What are you doing under my desk?”
He scowled. “I was trying to get into your computer, but you’ve got it rigged some way so I can’t.”
His hands remained out of sight, but his right arm moved toward a drawer where I store three CDs that back up the class and research notes on my hard drive. I heard the drawer close, and Pinkle stood up.
“Open that computer for me,” he said. “I want to see what you have in it.”
“I don’t have time now,” I said. “I’m due in class.” I took my folder of class notes from the file cabinet.
“Have fun,” I said as I left the office.
Pinkle did not look happy.
In the hall, I turned off the voice recorder and almost collided with Arthur Medford.
“I need some advice,” he said.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“Well, Dean-Dean ... uh ... Dr. Billig in psychology class is asking how everyone feels about one thing or another—”
“Wait,” I said. “It’s not ethical for me to comment on how another faculty member runs his class.”
“I know.” Arthur looked pained. “But when he calls the roll, we’re not supposed to answer ‘here’ or ‘present.’ We’re supposed to say how we feel. He ought to know no one’s going to tell a professor how he actually feels.”
“How do you actually feel?” I asked.
Arthur’s eyes lit up, and I wondered what kind of genie I’d let out of the bottle.